But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long.

A loveless world is a dead world.

Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Camus himself described this work as 'an attempt to understand the time I live in'.